North Carolina Announces 2026 Book Award Winners

RALEIGH – North Carolina will recognize several authors and literary contributors during the 2026 North Carolina Book Awards ceremony on Friday, December 4.

The awards will be presented during the annual meeting of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association at 109 E. Jones Street in Raleigh. The ceremony begins at 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

This year’s recipients include Joshua Trent Brown, winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction for “The Walls Are Closing in on Us,” and Appalachian State University professor Judkin Browning, who received the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction for “Deserter Declarations: Letters from North Carolinians Who Abandoned Their Confederate Units.”

Poet Ina Cariño received the Roanoke Chowan Award for Poetry for “Reverse Requiem.”

The Young People’s Literature Awards went to Chrystal D. Giles for “Listen to the Girls” and Carolyn Bennett Fraiser for “M Is for Mason Jar: A Homesteading Alphabet.”

Additional honors will recognize historians Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis, author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, and PlayMakers Repertory Company of Chapel Hill.

Clapsaddle will also deliver the keynote address.

The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, established in 1900, promotes the state’s literary heritage and preservation of historical resources.

The public is welcome to attend.